Five mid-winter "posse" cuts

​Throw a bunch of hot-sixteen spouting knuckleheads and/or fellow-traveler musos together over top of a beat or backing track, and you've got a recipe for awesome sauce, or abject disaster. For every "Scenario (Remix)," you can count on 20 or 25 abortions on the order of "My Drive Thru."

While none of the following intramural jams are especially amazing or epically dire, each one brings a unique vibe and perspective to the table. Also, doesn't this post beat the fuck out of listening to your roommate's Skrillex live bootlegs? 5. DJ Kay Slay feat. Torch, Gunplay, and Ace Hood, "Got Damn"Sounds Like: these guys need to switch to decaf.
Wack Rapper-Name Quotient: not totally excusable; not totally not over-the-top, either.

The Skinny: NYC swag/fashion house Мишка recruits tons of middling rappers to spit over a druggy, Teddy Riley-esque Mobius strip produced by Ryan Hemsworth - guys and gals with names like Toothtaker, Supa, Big Baby Gandhi, and Chippy Nonstop. Taken separately, everybody's pretty forgettable; collectively, there's certainly something happening here, even if I wish that something was like five or six minutes shorter.

Undergraduate-friendly verse: "I be damned if I copy what they do on camera/If it's cool, I'm a nerd, Lambda, lambda, lambda/In a 'bama bandanna, cram the exam in my hand."

Most unsurprising, uninspired references to Golden Era urban music touchstones: Digital Underground generally, Da La Soul's "Me, Myself, and I" specifically. Plus: Who among us doesn't enjoy a nice fake late 1980s/1990s R&B vamp with a snifter of Courvoisier and a Cuban cigar?

Minus: That shit gets crazy old over the course of 22 minutes, no matter how hot the spitting is at any given point.
TThe Kicker: Corny lady rappers invited to rep weakly for the XX chromosome set after an endless onslaught of bro-down misogyny - with two minutes left to go.

The Ugly:"ampichino" sounds like a rejected name for a Starbucks attempt to appeal to younger customers.

1. ReefHustle, Fred The Godson, and The Wash Up Boyz, "It's a Filthy New York"Sounds Like: it's time to decamp to Hoboken.

Wack Rapper-Name Quotient: obscene.

The Skinny: Fred The Godson hails from the Bronx, raps in a raspy, phlegmic flow that suggests that heart disease may be in his immediate future, and continues to wait in perpetuity for his rap-world close-up. Even off his bullshit, he's the best thing about "It's a Filthy New York" - the theme is making a dollar out of fifteen cents, like billions of other rap songs that tackle the identical subject matter more intriguingly - almost managing to make treading water sound like flossing while everybody else strains neck veins vying for your attention and fails miserably.

Personal Mythology Alert: "washing up" was what me and my cousins used to do at grandmother's house when we were kids, the idea being that before bed you'd wet a washcloth and wipe yourself off and throw on the jammies. Why? Because, well, water's expensive. I mean, you didn't need to know that, but that's what comes to mind whenever I find myself listening to a rap banger credited in part to two dudes who bill themselves as "The Wash Up Boyz."